Four Nights to Forever (6 page)

“They weren’t
that
bad,” Cassie said defensively. They’d been boring, but not worth Karen’s wrinkled nose. They hadn’t smelled bad.

Her friend waved that comment away. “As far as I can tell, the only thing you saw in them was that they each had at least two kids, all teenagers, so they were unlikely want more.”

“I’m forty. Most men aren’t going to ask me for more kids. Besides, I’m not looking for another husband.” She’d been a wife for twenty years, and other than her beautiful daughter, she didn’t have much to show for it.

“All the more reason to rebound with Doug while you can. He won’t be your next husband and kids won’t be an issue.” Karen bit her lip, and her expression turned to mischief. “Have fun with a man old enough to have learned some good tricks and young enough to have stamina to do them over and over and over again.”

“Karen!” Cassie pulled back, more to give her friend the satisfaction of having shocked her than because she was actually shocked. She hadn’t put it in those terms, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t thought about it.

“Besides, it wouldn’t hurt you to admit you always wanted more kids.”

That’s where Karen was wrong. Cassie had admitted it to Tom, though she’d had the suggestion of adoption dismissed with an eye roll enough times that she’d stopped saying anything. She’d always loved young children, but the thought of navigating the limits of being a stepmother was scary. Loving children she had to share—who were never fully
hers—
and having to learn when to pull back . . .

“Come on,” Karen said, trying to look downtrodden, though the sparkle in her eyes gave her away. “I’m on vacation and am going to live risky. One drink to wash my pain killers down, then we can head to the restaurant downstairs for dinner.” Cassie must have looked disapproving because Karen held up her hands. “I said only one. No more for the whole night, I promise.”

True to her word, Karen only had one drink that night. She also got in an airport shuttle bright and early the next morning, leaving Cassie in the condo, alone for the rest of her vacation. Alone but for the ski instructor she was meeting later that morning.

‡

D
oug waited for Cassie near the ski school office. There was something different about her stride as she walked across the plaza. She walked taller, maybe. Shoulders back and pointed chin held high in the air.

“Karen doing okay?” he asked when she got close enough to hear him.

“She went home this morning. I’m all alone in the condo.” Was that flirtation in her voice? Her goggles obscured her eyes so there weren’t any clues there to confirm. And it was entirely possible that he’d spent so much time last night thinking about the blue sports bra she’d been wearing under her cream-colored long-underwear top, and how round and touchable her breasts looked, that his mind was playing tricks on him.

If she made another flirtatious comment like the one from the lift yesterday, he was going to flirt back. His no-flings policy wasn’t a no-flirtation policy. Though worrying about a little flirtation was like worrying about closing the barn door after the horses were out.

He reached for his skis. Cassie was ready to clomp across the bridge back to the blue side of the mountain when Doug stopped her. “We’re going up the tram today.” As if to emphasize his point, the motor started on the tram and they both turned to watch it glide up the side of the mountain. When she pursed her lips, he reassured the concern on her face by saying, “There is a blue run off the tram, too. We’ll do that a couple times until you’re comfortable. Like riding a bike, remember?”

“It’s not that. I’m just worried about what happens if Doug luck strikes while I’m in that monstrous metal box instead of the lift.” Her voice was full of sass, and he turned his head sharply to look at her. Her lips were still pursed, but the apples of her cheeks had puffed out and she looked pretty amused with herself.

“I assure you, it would be the first time Doug luck ever struck on the tram.”

She picked up her skis, turned, and headed off to the tram line. Her ass was so distracting in her slightly too-small ski pants that he almost didn’t hear her say, “Maybe luck will strike Doug.”

Yeah, she was definitely flirting.

*

Cassie followed Doug down their third run of the morning. He had worked with her on her form at several points on the mountain, but mostly he either skied behind her or went in front of her to watch her make her way down. She’d been tentative at first, but the muscle memory had come back to her and with it, a childhood memory of her dad telling her to “attack the slopes.”

“That’s what I like to see,” Doug said as they walked back to the tram at the end of the run. “Let’s do it one more time with your body forward and knees bent like that, and then we’ll move on to blacks after lunch.”

She was about to get at the end of the long tram line when he motioned to a gate with his head. “Cutting is one of the benefits of private lessons.”

The liftee checking passes at the front of the line waved them through another gate and they stepped out onto the concrete platform to wait for the tram, where a couple of ski patrolmen already stood. Cassie recognized the one who had helped rescue Karen

“How’s your friend?” he asked.

“She’s gone back home.”

“Still stickin’ it out with Doug, though, huh?” the other patrolman said, the wink she couldn’t see behind his goggles clear in his voice.

“Doug promised me hotshot status by the end of the week. I’m going to hold him to it.” Skiing didn’t feel natural yet, not the way it had when she was younger, but the movements were getting more comfortable with each run. Doug seemed to know how far he could push her before she was about to toss her poles in frustration.

As the tram eased into view, the patrolmen ducked under a yellow rope. Doug put a hand on her back and steered her to the same rope. “The tin soldiers board first, but if we get on right after them, you can stand by the front window without fighting the hundred other people also desperate for a little breeze on their faces.”

“Anything not to be crammed in the middle again,” she said, huddling next to him before following his lead as he darted to the front.

When the tram escaped the platform, the mountain burst up in front of her. The wind coming in from the open window felt like Mother Nature was breathing on her, fresh and bright, with enough cold to remind you that she didn’t mess around. The car skimmed over trees that had seemed gigantic as she glided among them. Skiers were little dots against the bright-white snow. A sense of her own insignificance almost overwhelmed her. But then she reminded herself of the truth: even if she felt small, she wasn’t insignificant to Samantha. Or Karen. Or her parents. She was a part of the majesty of the world, and that was as important as anything.

“You look so serious.” With the tight crowd of people chatting and the breeze coming through the open window, Doug had to lean down to whisper in her ear. His warm breath skittered across the bare line of her jaw, and heat flooded her body, even the parts of her exposed to the cold wind.

“The mountain is beautiful. And grand. It’s silly, but I feel both inconsequential to this world and blessed to be a part of something so magnificent.”

“Not silly. I’ve been giving lessons here since I was twenty, and I still feel that way.” He looked out through the window, past the mountain top, almost as if he were peering into a future she couldn’t see. When he turned his head to look at her, his smile was mysterious and somehow sad. “It’s one of the reasons I keep working here, even in the summer when there’s no skiing.”

The gravity of his tone didn’t fit with Cassie’s idea of her selfish vacation plans, so she changed the subject. “You know, there hasn’t been a lot of instruction in these lessons so far,” she said with a playful nudge to his side.

He seemed to accept her change of subject, though his attention remained on the mountain. “Your instruction is to not be afraid. You haven’t skied since you were nearly twenty, but the skills are still in you. It’s a cliché we ski instructors say too much, but attack the mountain, Cassie.”

Doug echoed both her father and all the advice she’d been getting since the demise of her marriage:
Attack your new life, Cassie. Embrace change, Cassie, don’t be afraid of it.
None of it was bad advice, but what if a quiet life teaching yoga part time and waiting for grandchildren was her new life?

Poor Sam. I’m putting all future plans on her shoulders, and that’s too much responsibility for her.

And not enough for you,
her therapist would have said.

The tram passed by the magnificent cliffs at the top of the mountain and slowed to approach the platform. Together, Cassie and Doug turned to face the door. She flashed him a brilliant smile. She couldn’t expect Sam to provide her with grandchildren just to give her life purpose again, but she could ski like she wasn’t afraid.

As soon as she clicked into her skis, Cassie pointed them to the bottom of the hill and embraced the challenge.

‡

W
hen they reached the top of the mountain after lunch, Cassie barreled out of the tram as soon as the doors opened, leading the way across the metal platform and leaving Doug to be swept along with the crowds. When he caught up with her, she had already banged the snow off one of her boots and was stomping back into her bindings. She must have seen him come up next to her because she paused before lifting her left foot and flashed a delighted smile at him, wide and full of teeth. Any smile that didn’t include that cute little gap meant life was not being as wonderful to Cassie as it should be.

Something had clicked for her after their third run of the day and she was right: he hadn’t given her any instruction between that run and lunch. Now, though, he was going to put her through her paces. “We aren’t taking ‘The Way Home’ again down the mountain this time. We’re headed down another run, those bowls under the twin chutes. The bowls are wide and steep, and I’d better see your shins to the front of your boots and your upper body facing downhill.”

“I’m ready, Coach,” she said, and he could swear she had winked at him under her goggles.

He laughed as he knocked the snow free from his boots before stepping into his skis. “It’s going to be a lot harder than anything we did this morning.”

She planted her poles in the snow and leaned into them, a position that accentuated her round butt quite nicely, even if Doug wasn’t supposed to be thinking about her form for any reason other than to assess how well she was bending her knees. “Just tell me where to go.”

He gave some basic directions on which cat track to follow, then looked down at his poles and slipped his gloves through the straps. When he looked back up, Cassie bared her teeth and growled, sounding like a fierce kitten ready to play. She bent her knees and, with the momentum of a downhill racer, launched herself off in the direction Doug had pointed.

Her powdery lightness was so completely at odds with the serious conversations they’d been having here and there throughout the day that he was caught off guard and stood, frozen, for several seconds while she zipped her way down the small run to the cat track.